I didn’t finish, and when the library emailed to say the book was due back, I wasn’t compelled to renew.

The concept’s mystery is meant to act as a lure, the pacts survivors make to stay alive meant as a cadence by which we follow and keep drumming, but there isn’t enough substance behind the characters and those promises and what they mean to keep me really involved. And for as whimsically dark the world’s plight is, the prose doesn’t reflect as much. We arrive at a moment where the protagonist loses his supplies and it doesn’t feel like a blow, doesn’t feel like an urgent pivot. His wife’s disappearance, what should lead us to frantic search or flight, falls flat. I’m meant to float along with this methodical plot, but there was no current pulling me downstream.